


A Dark Place

by TeeEye82



Category: Slender Man Mythos, Slender: The Eight Pages
Genre: Backstory, Creative License, Gen, The Girl of The Eight Pages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 01:51:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeeEye82/pseuds/TeeEye82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who is the girl that searches so relentlessly in the dark, lost and trapped to the fenced in park and the shadows of a world without a moon?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dark Place

**Author's Note:**

> This is an unfinished draft I found in my Slender Mythos folder that I have no plans of completing, partly because I don't remember what I was doing with it and also I feel it can end just as well as where I last left off. If you would like to adopt it and continue the story yourself, contact me and we'll work something out, but please don't take it until all has been arranged.

When I was a little girl, I had an imaginary friend. I say imaginary because no one else could see him, but I always believed he was real. To the last fiber of my being, I knew he wasn't something I'd come up with on my own, no matter how much my Mum tried to convince me that whatever I was seeing wasn't actually there.

Because he was there. He was _always_ there.

He was there when no one else could be. He was there when I had friends and family over. He was there when I thought I was alone. He was there when I knew I wasn't. He was just there.

And there was nothing wrong with this. He became a source of strength. Someone I could rely on if I needed company. Someone I could look at and feel safe just knowing he was watching. Always watching. Even though he had no eyes.

I had once asked him, "Mister? What happened to your face?" But he hadn't responded, only kept watching. A silent observer. Never speaking and never giving me any answers.

Years passed. I was ten when I noticed the change. And I only noticed the change because for once, in all my memories, did I truly feel alone. Completely. Like the only living being in the world, curled under the blankets in my room, trying not to let the darkness outside get me. Trying not to let the silence take away my breath.

It was the first night he hadn't been there.

The next day he was back, only more at a distance. No longer did he stand sentry in the corner of my room, but instead outside my window. And in the next weeks, he moved further away. Slowly, ever so slowly, he began disappearing from my every day life.

Lunch with friends at school was spent nervously glancing around the room, searching for my one constant. In the end, he had been outside the school entirely, waiting across the street beside the lamp post above the crosswalk.

By age twelve, it had become a rarity for him to even be anywhere nearby, often leaving for weeks on end, coming back for maybe a night or two, and then vanishing once more. And this. This is what led to my undoing.

Mum didn't know what to do with me, didn't know how to control me. I would be fine one moment, silently sitting at the kitchen table, drawing my now deemed imaginary friend, and she would come in and ask how my day was. This could set me off into screaming at her, accusing that she chased him away, that she had made him think he was useless, unreal. And I would hit the table, over and over, and she would send me to my room for my behavior.

Twice I almost hit her.

I went for days without food, worrying my Mum sick that I was starving myself, only to one night completely empty everything in the cabinets. I was falling apart, becoming paranoid, seeing my friend when he wasn't there, every corner I turned, every light I switched off, every time I closed my eyes. Closer and closer my mind wanted him to be. Further and further it felt he really was.

Everything was about him. Books; the letters shifted to tell me stories of adventures we could have had. Movies; he was there in every scene. At the park, he was the trees, the shadows behind the houses across the street, the shapes created in the clouds. My world fell apart, taking me with it, and it was on my fifteenth birthday that I closed my eyes to a dream, and woke up to another.

And he was there.

Just sitting there, in the corner of a dimly lit concrete room, limbs curled around himself as if to become as small as possible, head bowed to the floor. At first, unrestrained joy hit me, and I wanted to run to him. To reach out and touch his arm, making sure he was really there. But my feet only made one step, the soft tap of skin to stone echoing louder than it should have.

And he moved.

Unfurling, his arms lowering from his lack of face and tentacles snapping aggressively across the wall behind him, he looked up. Looked at me. Through me. My soul was exposed, a terribly cold feeling settling in every vein of my body, and I realized that I was afraid.

He lunged.

I remember screaming and going to take a step backwards, bumping into a wall and covering my face with my hands. I felt like I was going to die. Like I was going to be killed by my friend. I didn't know what I had done to deserve his wrath, but I was sorry. I was so sorry and wanted him to forgive me. I wanted him to forgive me for something I didn't understand.

When nothing happened for a moment, I lowered my hands tentatively and opened my eyes.

He was so close.

Right there. Another three inches or so and he could curl over my head. But he couldn't get any closer. My eyes slid over his seemingly suspended form, arms raised and bent forwards in a reaching fashion, tentacles writhing and blossomed outwards like inky wings. But he couldn't touch me, and I noticed the binds of chain that were attached to each lanky appendage, the links of metal stretched to their fullest, the other ends deeply set into the opposite wall and straining to keep him secured.

A prisoner. He was restrained to this cell, this dank chamber, and somehow it was my fault. Somehow, I did this to him.

His head tilted sideways, like a curious animal, and one bony finger curled in a "come closer" manner. When I didn't move to obey, his body seemed to sigh, and he relaxed, lowering his tentacles under the weight of his bonds until they were dragging along the floor. His arms also lowered, though only enough so that they weren't immediately trying to get me.

We were both silent, him looking down at me, almost calmly, and me staring with wide, terrified eyes up at him.

**I cannot leave unless you allow me physical contact with your person.**

My breath hitched. He talked. But it wasn't only that. The way he had spoken, voice coming in an almost whisper, almost growl, had sent unpleasant shivers down my spine. Shivers of dread.

"What happens if I do?" My own voice was a pathetic whimper in comparison to his, and I only shrank further when his entire body seemed to want to surge towards mine, tentacles slithering around his feet and reaching for me again, though not as demandingly as before.

**I will be able to leave this place. Don't you want that, child? For me to be free again? Or would you rather keep me here, locked away in a small box where no light may ever grace my being again?**

My mind told me to be wary. I didn't know why I shouldn't believe him. Shouldn't trust him. But he had left me, had destroyed me. All I needed was for him to watch over my sleep, and instead it was all I had been able to do to get to sleep in the first place. He had forsaken me.

"But what would happen to me?"

An odd question to ask, I thought a moment afterwards, and his head tilted to the other side, body swaying in the opposite direction.

**Why ruin the surprise and spoil a perfectly good adventure?**

It was surreal hearing him talk. Even if it was more like thoughts projected into my head, forcefully inserting whatever he wished to communicate. But I didn't feel like giving him what he wanted right away. Not when he had denied me my one grasp on reality.

"How about we play a game?"

**Oh?**

His tentacles flicked over the span of air that separated us, tips coming close enough to move the air across my arms, but still out of reach of my skin. If it were possible, I would have sunken into the wall to put more distance between us, his presence being almost uncomfortably close, but since that was out of the question I was stuck with being pressed flat against the cold surface behind me.

**What kind of... game?**

His voice betrayed both intrigue and restlessness, and I swallowed thickly before continuing.

"Hide and Seek."

He seemed taken aback for a moment before a dark, empty chuckle rolled through my mind.

**Even though you have aged, you are still the same child I... _met_ twelve years ago. Very well. What are the terms, young one?**

"It will be a Red Light, Green Light spin off, where when I see you you have to stop moving. I hide, you seek, and if I can escape, I win. And you get to stay here with me." Selfish, yes. But I didn't want him running off on me, again. He belonged where I could be near him, and if that place was in my head, then that was fine with me.

He was silent for a moment before shifting slightly, the chains making a faint scrape as he pulled at them once more.

**And if I win?**

"Then you get what you want." The words burned in my throat, going against what _I_ wanted. If he left me, I doubted I would ever see him again. This was my last chance, and I couldn't screw it up if I wished to get my best friend back. If I wished to no longer be a threat to my Mum. If I...

**I accept your terms. Let the game begin.**

The small stone mixed cell melted away and slid down into shadow, the looming figure of what I was slowly beginning to consider a beast disappearing just as the bare lick of starlight prickled my arms. I stared up at the moonless sky, which did well in keeping the trees and park shrouded in an endless black, fingers running over the ridges of a torch and teasing the switch idly.

I had to win. If I wished to ever sleep again.


End file.
